Delicate Traffic - by Greg Parmley - Chapter 1

Tom Banner bounced high on the back seat of the scooter and tightened his grip on Rose’s jacket. Potholes gaped like moon craters under the jaundiced full beam glare and shadow figures flickered between vines and boughs in the jungle wall, their breath heavy with sweet aquilaria, sugar palms and jasmine.

As they pulled up, she stamped on the kickstand and the last firework burst open beyond the tree line. Tails of vermilion and amber fire scorched the air; its luminous fingers reached, stretched and died on the shack’s corrugated iron roof. Rose lifted back the sackcloth and led him inside where a ragged mattress lay prone on the floor. A chair, a wash bucket, a cardboard box stuffed with clothes. The bare wooden slats canted to the left and made him dizzy.

‘This my home,’ Rose said. She sat down, motioned him to follow and removed her jacket, then the pink T-shirt and her jeans. A ripped Manchester United poster crackled as air crept through the gaps behind it.

‘Um…it’s very nice.’

‘You like?’ She was somewhere in her twenties, pert breasts crowned by hazelnut nipples and wild black hair between her legs. Cellulite ran like scar tissue across her stomach and thighs; she was fleshier than he expected and the bedsprings whined underneath her. Her tongue darted out between stiff lips and probed his mouth.

‘So you like soccer?’ he said.

‘Suck you?’

‘No, football.’ He nodded towards the poster. ‘You know, David Beckham?’

Rose shook her head.

Tom watched motionless as lacquered fingertips unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off his shorts. His head span with objections and thoughts of the bar and the final sickly margarita. It had been so long. She had targeted a vulnerable quarry, weak to just a hint of affection and he followed blithely, a horny, lumbering sideshow mule.

‘So you pay now?’

‘Sorry, yes, of course.’ Tom fumbled in the pocket of his shorts and handed over the ten dollar bill.

‘And same for rent?’

He frowned. ‘For what?’

‘Rent very expensive.’

‘But you didn’t say anything about—’

‘Same for rent.’ She shrugged, her face pasted with innocence as though he had read every fine print point and forgotten the details. Her hand snaked down his stomach and stroked his erection. Excitement silenced what protest remained. ‘We have lot of fun, long time.’

‘Er…yes, okay.’ He handed over another bill and she stuffed it under the mattress. Tom lay back, naked. ‘So, I’ve never—’

‘You very young, very handsome,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’ His smile landed halfway between a grimace and the leer of an idiot, happy to be pelted with stones for the attention.

‘We have many fun.’ Rose winked and lowered her head between his legs, her hair bobbing either side of his hips. Strands of cobwebs hung from the ceiling above them, exoskeletons of insects trapped in the dusty fibres.

He only lasted for a minute. Rose grabbed a toothbrush and ran outside. Tom listened to her gag and spit. With every second that his pulse slowed, his head spun wilder, logic overtook the testosterone urges and rational thought returned. He felt sick.

She reappeared in the doorway. ‘You want massa now, then boom boom later?’

‘Are you alright?’

‘Me okay. Have hair.’ She pointed to her throat and made a retching noise.

‘Oh, sorry.’ His stomach felt twisted and unsettled.

‘You like massa now?’

‘Do you mean massage?’ A gurgling from his abdomen. Tom rubbed his midriff.

She grinned. ‘Yes, massa.’

‘Er…no, thank you. I’m…’ Tom bolted up from the bed. His gorge was rising fast and he had to reach the outside. He barged past her, sank to his knees in the dirt and vomited.

Rose laughed. ‘Have too many drink.’

‘Something like that.’ He heaved a second volley of alcohol, sugar and bile. How had he sunk so low? Was it her open proposition,de rigueursmile and the promise of tenderness? Or the scooter ride; a journey into the exotic while his heart leapt in anticipation? Tom’s hand ground into her minty toothpaste spatter and touched reality.

‘I have to go,’ he said. He wiped his mouth and stood up. How many hours ago had he left London? Was it over a day yet?

‘Okay, handsome man.’ Rose handed him his clothes and leant against the doorway as Tom dressed in the pale half-light of the shack’s single bulb.

‘Thanks, see you,’ he said.

‘Bye, handsome man.’ She giggled and retreated inside, visibly delighted with an early night.

The further Tom walked from her crooked walls, the more his stomach calmed. There was no warmth in the act, just bitter functionality, a world from his masturbation fantasies. The deed was cold and impassive, and he, a pitiful echo of his former self. How had he fallen so far?

‘Fucking Kacey,’ he said. ‘It’s all her fault.’ Mosquitoes circled, drawn by the stench of vomit and sweat on his skin. His thoughts were as black as the nightfall that cloaked his return to the guesthouse and as Tom trudged towards the lights on Victory Hill, he recalled the last time he had thrown up and a single, distant lamp was refracted in two by the moisture in his eyes.

It was three months ago in October and three months after she left. He had woken that morning to a Saharan throat craving water. The night before, he’d been out with an old university friend at The Loch Tavern in Camden. It was a break from drinking alone and an opportunity to bemoan Kacey’s departure.

He couldn’t remember what time he had crashed, but it was late. Tequila shots were quaffed at some point and his mouth tasted like a soggy bucket of cinders, burnt numb from inhaling two packs of cigarettes. Tom had returned to smoking after she left, recently enough to notice the stinking, woody taste.

He stumbled out of bed, the blood draining from his head to leave a vigorous throbbing in its wake. These days, hangovers were the only certainty in his life and he rarely bothered to return the ibuprofen to the cupboard—he kept it on the counter top, next to the water glasses.

‘Damn’. Tom gripped his head and slid onto the Ikea three-seater whose umber canvas documented the arrival of careless lodgers with hot rock burns and red wine stains. The carefully co-ordinated ochre walls, hessian carpet, chestnut rug and brushed steel picture frames were all remnants of a previous life, which although recent, slipped away with every strained conversation and email.

Tom lay motionless, legs spread wide, upturned arms slung static by his side. Only the tic below his left eye moved, animated by an invisible whirlwind of thoughts. Bethnal Green was cloudy today, perhaps it would keep the police helicopters from aggravating his sick head. If the beginning of things was a succulent, early spring, this period was all Pleistocene ice age.

Before his eyes could adjust to the brittle daylight, the phone’s shrill tones rang out. Tom rubbed his temples.

‘Hello?’

‘Tom, its Kacey.’ Her timing was always perfect.

‘Hello stranger.’

‘Don’t start, okay? How are you?’

‘Not too bad. I was out late with Becca.’

‘So you’re hungover.’

‘No, I’m just peachy.’ Tom swallowed silently to push saliva into his parched throat. ‘So what’s new? How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. The distance in her voice stretched beyond the ocean that separated them. ‘I’m just very busy, which is’—she paused—‘probably agood thing.’

‘How’s work?’

‘It’s good but manic. They’ve got me learning the ropes in the office. It’s pretty different to working for John. Much more, well, professional.’

‘So have you signed up any hot acts?’

‘I’ve signed a lot of invoices.’

They both laughed and Tom sat forward to try to ease the violent pulsing in his head.

‘Listen, I’ve been thinking about coming over for Christmas,’ he said.

She fell silent.

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Why not? We’ve never spent Christmas apart, not in six years.’

She sighed. ‘Look, Tom. I know that we’re like elastic bands, and that when you push I pull and vice versa, but I just don’t think you should.’

‘Come on, Kace. You haven’t explained why you left so quickly, we’re hardly speaking, and I want to fix this. Why can’t I come over?’

‘I’m just busy, Tom. You know I had to start this job immediately. They needed me out here. Please don’t start.’

‘I’m not starting anything,’ he said. ‘It’s the finishing I’m worried about.’

‘I just need someme time, you know that.’

‘But what the hell does that really mean? It just sounds like American psychobabble.’

‘Don’t be like that.’

‘I’m not, really. I just don’t understand why you need six months in Chicago before I move over. You hardly have time to speak to me anymore. For heaven’s sake Kace, you’re mywife.’

She tutted. ‘We’ve already been over this, Tom. It’s a good opportunity and we planned to emigrate anyway, right?’

‘Yes,’

‘So let me get myself set up, please.’

‘Without me? I’m worried, Kace, really worried.’

‘Look, for now…I don’t know, I—’

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Spit it out, what are you trying to say?’

‘I just need you to be my best friend.’

Tom didn’t react quickly to much in his life, the normal bustle and buzz of the everyday seeped through him like a warm milk, but his finger caught the line button in record time. It was a pain reflex. I just need you to be my best friend. The handset dropped beside Tom, each as lifeless as the other.

Six years ago it felt like a fairy tale, and he The Frog Prince. They met backstage at an Iggy Pop show in London. Tom had graduated university and was contributing to a music fanzine in exchange for gig tickets and CDs.

His first glimpse of the willowy girl with spiked platinum hair was burnt to memory: an oriental silk print T-shirt hugged her body to reveal a slender frame and gentle curves, her narrow waist gave way to slight hips and she stood almost awkwardly, svelte and lissom. She was alone at the bar, looking doe-eyed around the room and biting her bottom lip. As Tom stared, their eyes touched, and he felt that brief instant when the perpetual tick of life’s second hand is interrupted.

She was the type of girl you never got to go out with; the type that only rock stars dated. Tom, tone-deaf and ham-fisted, was more than a world tour or two away. After their first conversation at the bar and the exchange of numbers that followed, he felt proud at having eschewed his usual shyness. It only occurred to him, years later, that it was she who initiated the dialogue.

‘Damn.’ Tom studied the figure in the blank TV screen; the bony cheekbones and ashen face were a reasonable likeness. The hangover’s lingering neuralgia ground down any hope of clarity as his thoughts flew between either end of a six-year period. Wasn’t 6,000 miles enough distance? There were still no answers. Without rationale or explanation, she was gradually ostracizing him from her life, and a continent apart, he was powerless.

The answerphone was flashing again. He’d risen several times in the last week to find its red eye winking, as if it criticised his drinking. He wasn’t an alcoholic; he just drank to find sleep. Tom reached over and pressed down on the playback button.

‘Hi, this is another message for Tom. Tom, I’m trying to reach Kacey on a matter of urgent business. You never seem to be in, so I’ll try again.’ It was the third message in as many days; a gruff, North American accent and a quiet hiss of static.

‘If you’re not going to leave your name, you can just bugger off,’ he said, and reclined until the cushion braced his aching kidneys. Across the lounge, as if high on a podium, a monochrome wedding picture sat on a hi-fi speaker, two grey faces lit with innocent elation.

Relations between them had cooled that year and Kacey became withdrawn. She ceased to find his feigned and desperate goofiness amusing, and Tom’s irritation with her mood swings stopped him from rooting out the cause. He became as apathetic in their relationship as with the rest of his life and the nightly blare of the television masked the silence between them.

She wanted him to reverse the lethargy of his career, while he sought a return to the former glory of their sex life. She declared a need to start a family, while he was apprehensive in their joint malaise. They reached, without realising it, a bloody stumbling block, the foundations of which had clotted, flint-like, in the crevices between them.

The phone rang again. Tom grabbed the handset.

‘Kace?’ he said. The word croaked between his lips.

‘Is Kacey there?’ Tom recognised the gravelly American voice from the answer machine message.

‘No, who is this?’ he said.

‘A friend’—a pause sat where a name should have been—‘do you know where I can find her?’

‘No, she doesn’t live here anymore. Who is this?’

‘I told you, a friend,’ the caller said. ‘Look buddy, it’s in her best interest that I speak to her as soon as possible. Do you have a forwarding address, or a phone number?’

‘Look, I’m really not in the mood, so what is it you want her for,buddy?’

‘I already told you, I need to speak to her. She’s in trouble and she better get in touch soon. Now quit screwing around and give me her details. Pretty please.’

‘Excuse me?’ He bolted up on the seat.

‘You heard me. You don’t seriously expect me to believe that you don’t know where your wife is, do you? Even if she has left you.’

‘What the…?’

The caller chuckled. ‘Hey man, it is what it is.’

‘Who the hell is—’ Tom began, but the caller hung up.

‘Damn.’ Was the adrenalin making his skull swell? Tom gripped his forehead and squeezed. ‘Right,’ he said. He hauled his sick bulk over to the laptop on the Ikea dining room table—a flat-packed construct as collapsible as their life now appeared. Man and machine battled for lucidity as the computer revived itself from hibernation and Tom squinted at the screen to ease its glare before selecting Hotmail from the browser’s favourite list. He deleted his address from the sign-in screen, and with deliberate, slow keystrokes, replaced it with hers: Kaceygirl@hotmail.com.

Kacey grew up in Bangkok, the daughter of an investment banker who was rarely around. She was raised, with her younger sister Angelina, by a Thai nanny, Thanawat, who she often spoke of contacting. Her parents’ marriage was failing by the time they returned to Chicago, and the split shortly after left her devoid of a father figure.

At the age of eighteen, she visited a dental surgeon who shaved down two buck teeth and she set off to Europe with a modelling contract. For the four years before they met, she had lived in Paris and Milan, strutting down catwalks or as the face of a new cosmetic in magazine adverts. Kacey’s travels in Europe taught her self-reliance; an independence masked as confidence, and everything about her fitted Tom’s overblown romantic nature. They dated frantically, and after six months of long-distance phone calls and transatlantic flights he proposed. She accepted and moved to London.

Tom’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. To continue would be to admit the death of trust between them. Had the ink on their marriage contract proved so faint? Guilt bore over him and he pulled back. This was wrong and would give her ammunition for more distance. Events of the past few weeks played over and over, a looped video installation in an empty gallery of confusion. The loose ends, the arguments, all of the uncertainties urged him forward. But the anonymous call was the final weight which pitched over the edge of his tolerance, taking his sanity with it.

‘Right,’ he said again. He began with the obvious choices of passwords: their two cats, Berwyn and Tallulah; her sister, Angelina; her maiden name, Lane.

The email address or password is incorrect. Please retype the email address and password.

Then relevant cities: Chicago, Paris, London. Still nothing. Tom slouched in the chair, short of energy and ideas. Favourite bands? He typed in Veruca Salt, Filter, Elliott Smith and Foo Fighters. An error message appeared:

You have made too many unsuccessful sign-in attempts with an incorrect password. You can wait a few moments and then try to sign in again or reset your password if you can’t remember it.

If he changed her password, Kacey would guess that he was responsible, but he was desperate and she, unwilling to reveal whether a steel cable or sinewy length of hair held up their future. As wary of confrontation as he was, Tom had to know.

He clicked through to the reset screen and was prompted by her secret question: What is your mother’s maiden name? Johnson. Simple. He typed a new password, Happyhack, in the hope that it might shift the blame to a random, computer-savvy teenager.

As his wife’s inbox appeared, Tom scanned sender’s names and subject headings. It was mostly correspondence from family and friends. He scrolled back three months and paused at an unfamiliar name, Dan Paris. The message was dated 20 August, four days before she had left.

Hi Babygirl,
I hope that the move goes OK. Are you planning to take much stuff with you? I reckon it’s best to leave as much emotional baggage behind as possible.
So listen, thanks for confiding in me. I don’t really know what ended our time together all those years ago but I haven’t stopped thinking about you since. It was amazing to see what a sassy, intelligent and motivated woman you’ve become. Not that I would have expected you to become anything else!
The family loved you and want you to visit again as soon as you can. What can I say? They think you’re great. You really made quite an impression. When you left in the morning my feet were two feet off the ground.
Anyway, gotta get back to work now. This job truly sucks! I’d like to talk more about that business idea you mentioned though.
See ya,
Dan

‘When you left in the morning?’ Tom read and re-read the lines, their meaning obscured through the muddled fog of his hangover. Kacey had spent a long weekend in Chicago ten days before leaving, visiting her sister and an old friend who had recently got back in touch. The flight was booked long in advance of the job offer but Tom complained that the trip gave them scant time together before her departure. She went anyway. Was this Dan the same friend? Tom cursed his tequila haze.

He copied the email and vowed to deliberate its meaning later, half of him loath to accept the dirty reality it pointed to, while the other half still knocked back shots in The Lock Tavern. He leant forward and scrolled back further. There were as many emails from her former boss as his own ignorantly buoyant notes. Tom opened the most recent.

Kacey,
I understand that this may be an unwelcome note, but it’s time to pay me back. We can look at some sort of payment structure if things are tight—maybe £1,000 for 20 months?
Please don’t think this is sour grapes over what happened, it’s purely business. I hope you understand.
Love
John

Tom totalled up the payment. ‘£20,000?’A smarmy, middle-aged playboy who married into money, John Lion had run a series of failed promotion agencies and record labels, his minor gains outweighed by regular losses. His four-storey Chelsea townhouse and vintage Jensen Interceptor projected an image of a wealthy entrepreneur, but he was laughably known within the music industry as the man who turned down the offer to stage Live Aid, assuring Bob Geldof that it would never work. Complete Records was a small independent, and John had employed Kacey as label manager with little experience. John always seemed aloof and indifferent to Tom, who never trusted him.

Tom navigated the cursor towards an earlier email dated 27 July.

Re: Your call
Hey Kace,
Can you get away this week? I really need some time with you. Jack’s driving me crazy—he spat at the nanny yesterday, and Lauren’s tied up with a case.
I know I can’t give you what you want, but you know I love you, right?
XX
John

It had begun badly enough but the day spiralled out of control, plummeting into a nightmare that exceeded his deepest paranoia. Surely it wasn’t true? Tom’s fingers trembled against the mouse as he opened Kacey’s original message.

Hey Sweetie,
Just wanted to say thanks for your call. It really meant a lot, even though it’s difficult for both of us.
I really want to take Tom shopping on the King’s Road on Saturday but I’m so scared that we’ll bump into you. Are you going away at all?
How’s Jack? Did he like the bunny?
Miss you
Love
Kace
xoxo

Tom launched from the chair, staggered backwards and sent it flying, the leg gouging out enamel from the radiator. In the space of six lines, the bloated sensation in his stomach transformed into a heaving, volcanic mix of revulsion and bile. He lurched towards the corridor, one arm outstretched to buttress his queasy frame, opened the bathroom door and sank to his knees, his hands feebly clutching the cistern.

‘Damn,’ he mumbled between convulsions, spewing vomit into the dark bowl of despair beneath him.

That was the last time he had thrown up.

(End of Chapter 1.)

Greg Parmley

© Greg Parmley. All rights reserved by the author.

ISBN: 978-974-7358-001

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